Nans felt something she rarely felt — not fear, exactly, but the sharp awareness that she had led these women into a situation she couldn’t talk her way out of.
Sal was five feet away now. Four.
“Last chance,” Crane said, his voice almost gentle. “The diamonds. Where are they?”
Nans looked at him. She drew a breath. And she noticed, just at the edge of her vision, something that changed everything.
A black Cadillac, parked two rows over, that had not been there when they arrived.
CHAPTER TEN
Nans hadone rule about situations like this — when you don’t know the answer, buy time. Stall. Ask a question. Let the room shift around you until you see the opening.
The Cadillac was the opening.
It sat two rows over, dark, engine off, parked at an angle that gave its occupants a clear view of everything happening in the lot. Ruth’s text had done its work. Frankie Malone was here, and he hadn’t come alone. Nans could make out the shapes of at least two other people in the car, large shapes, the kind of shapes that made a living being large.
Nans didn’t look at the Cadillac again. She didn’t want Crane to follow her gaze — not yet. She needed a few more seconds.
She let her eyes move naturally across the parking lot, the way a nervous person’s might, and she found the second thing she needed. The security camera. It was mounted on a pole near the facility entrance, a small white dome with a blinking red light, angled to cover the lot. It had been pointed at them since they’d arrived, recording everything — Crane’s SUV, the confrontation, Sal advancing, all of it.
And then there was Ruth.
Ruth, who was standing rigid with her iPad clutched to her chest, her face pale, her knuckles white. Ruth, who looked like a woman frozen with fear. Except that Ruth’s fingers were moving on the back of the iPad — small, precise movements, the kind that came from years of practice. Tapping. Swiping. Ruth wasn’t frozen. Ruth was working.
Three pieces. The camera. The Cadillac. Ruth. That was enough.
Nans turned back to Crane and let the fear drain out of her posture. When she spoke, her voice was as calm and clear as a bell.
“Mr. Crane, I’m going to save us both some time.”
Crane raised an eyebrow. Sal stopped advancing but didn’t step back.
“There are no diamonds,” Nans said. “Not in our pockets, not in Ida’s purse — though I understand the temptation to check, it’s very large — and not hidden anywhere on our persons. Your delivery man left a bag at the wrong back door in the dark because your new restaurant is two doors down from my granddaughter’s bakery and they look identical at four in the morning. That’s not our mistake. That’s yours.”
Crane’s expression didn’t change, but his weight shifted — barely, almost imperceptibly, the way a man shifts when something isn’t going the way he expected.
“If stones are missing from your count,” Nans continued, “then either your Montreal supplier shorted you, or your associates helped themselves before handing the shipment over. I’d suggest you ask Sal about that. But it has nothing to do with a baker who was half-conscious on her kitchen floor when they left.”
Sal’s jaw tightened. “I didn’t take nothing.”
“Nobody asked you yet,” Nans said, without looking at him.
Crane’s mouth twitched — not a smile, just a flicker of something. Amusement, maybe. Or recalculation.
“That’s a compelling theory,” Crane said. “But theories don’t solve my problem.”
“No,” Nans agreed. “But this might.”
She paused. Nans knew the power of a pause — the way silence made people lean forward, the way it turned a statement into an event.
“That security camera,” she pointed to the pole near the entrance, “has been recording this entire conversation. Your SUV. Your face. Your associates threatening five women in a parking lot. That footage is stored on a hard drive in that office, and the young man at the desk has been watching his television, but cameras don’t need an audience to work.”
Crane’s eyes moved to the camera. The red light blinked back at him.
“Additionally,” Nans said, “my friend Ruth — the one you might assume is standing there paralyzed with fear — has been live-streaming video from her iPad for the last four minutes. To three people. One of them is a detective with the Brooke Ridge Falls Police Department.”
Ruth held up the iPad slightly, angling it so Crane could see the screen. It showed the front-facing camera view — Crane, Sal, Needles, the SUV, all of it, framed neatly in a video window. A small red dot in the corner pulsed: broadcasting.
